Excerpt on jobs
JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour): Mark, unemployment rate is down, the best numbers, I guess, that they have seen since this president took office.
MARK SHIELDS, syndicated columnist: That's right, Judy.
JUDY WOODRUFF: What does it all mean for the presidential campaign?
MARK SHIELDS: It's encouraging. It's good news. It's upbeat for the country, first of all, but certainly for the Obama administration.
I think that you have seen this sort of increasing better-than-expected jobs numbers now the second month in a row. And I think it's reflected in the president's support. You can see his own numbers improving.
JUDY WOODRUFF: What do you say?
DAVID BROOKS, New York Times columnist: Yes. I mean, that's -- yes. People feel better about the country.
There was a sense, I think, a couple months ago things were spiraling down. And that sense has not totally gone away, but feel better about the country, feel better about the way things are going. And one of the good pieces of news is not because we have some massive stimulus going out there to pump things up.
It is the business cycle. And so the business cycle is ticking upwards. And as all the economists say, that doesn't mean it is going to continue. The CBO came out this week, the Congressional Budget Office, with a projection that next year or the rest of the year is going to be down.
And then looming out there always is Europe. When you talk to people who are following the European situation full-time, a lot of anxiety there. So we have had a false dawn before. This could be another one. On the other hand, this could be the slow, gradual climb out of what we have been through.
JUDY WOODRUFF: How much does it matter, Mark, how the Republican nominee candidates still handle this?
I mean, today, they were pretty much universally saying, well, the president should be doing better, should have done more.
MARK SHIELDS: They were. You almost wanted to say, cheer up, fellows. Eventually, things will get worse.
MARK SHIELDS: I mean, they were clearly sort of discouraged or upset that there was good news.
I mean, there are still, Judy, 5.6 million fewer jobs today than there were when the great recession began in December 2007. And so we have got a long way to go. But this is good news. It's encouraging. And it means that the Republicans have to come up with something other than: We're the other guys.
I mean, they have to come up with some vision. And whatever Mitt Romney's strengths have been, vision has not been one of them up until now.
DAVID BROOKS: Yes, I just completely want to underscore that.
First, on the policy sense, it lessens the need probably for a little more stimulus. It increases the need for long-term unemployment policies, because that issue is still very strong.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Which is something that Congress is dealing with right now.
DAVID BROOKS: Right. And so we still have this huge number of long-term unemployed.
But the idea that Mitt Romney, assuming he is the nominee, can coast to the presidency on bad economy while just uttering banalities about how much he loves America, that's probably not to going happen now. If the economy continues to tick up, he can't just ride the economy. He has to be much more philosophical, much more substantive about how he differs with the president.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So how much of this is the president just simply at the mercy, David, of these numbers that come out the first week of every month, and how much of it is how he talks about it?
DAVID BROOKS: Well, we cover campaigns, and they all say, I created this job, I created that job.
The extent to which a president is responsible for the economy under his watch -- we should emphasize this. It will help him politically, but it's completely bogus. Presidents do not control the economy under their watch. They can have a marginal impact in extraordinary circumstances. But it has to do with a lot more complicated things then they are responsible for.
And that is true with Obama. That's true with Bush. It's true probably with Herbert Hoover, that presidents do not correlate in the short term with economic quarterly-by-quarterly performance.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So he just has to wake up the first Friday of every month and hope that the numbers...
MARK SHIELDS: Well, I think the president did take dramatic, bold, controversial steps. And I think he can make the case that he -- what he did is working, that there were major policy changes that were at the outset of his administration.
Right now, there are very few arrows left in his quiver of what he can do. And so, in that sense -- and I think -- just to underscore what David said about Europe and what we had in the previous discussion with Ray, I mean, Iran...
JUDY WOODRUFF: About Iran.
MARK SHIELDS: Iran is the wild card. I mean, if we're talking about the Strait of Hormuz being closed or something of that sort, that is a game-changer politically.
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